


Below a Tinted Veil

by Elisif



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 16:39:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1517684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisif/pseuds/Elisif
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lalwen and Aredhel's relationship, over the years</p>
            </blockquote>





	Below a Tinted Veil

I first met Aredhel at the fitting for Eärwen’s wedding dress. I had been absent at my studies for a number of years, travelling around Aman and learning under the tutelage of various masters, but took a leave of absence to return home for Arafinwë’s wedding, and the fitting ceremony happened to be the family event to which I was pulled by my sister Findis upon my arrival in Tirion, having only barely dismounted and shaken off the dust of the road.   
In the costly extravagance to which we were partial in those days, such samples as the bride judged unworthy for her gown were tossed wantonly aside by the silk-weaver and the marble floor of the fitting-room was scattered with scraps of gauzy silks in golds and purples, silvers and greens. Irissë, decorously invited along though barely more than a toddler, could not contain her excitement and raced about the room with the energy only truly small children possess, laughing as she lifted up the discarded silks and wrapped them around and threw them over herself until she was veritably gift-wrapped in silks and stumbled about the room dizzy enough to bump into chairs and barely able to see.   
I was given the full explanation of this later; I arrived late and paced into the fitting-room reaching out to greet my Telerin sister-in-law only to have the small, muffled tornado that was my niece crash headlong into my legs and topple over backwards onto the floor.   
Ignoring Eärwen’s stammered apologies, I knelt down and with pinched fingertips pulled back the gauzy piece of silver that she had selected to hang over her face.   
“And which little lady do I have the honour of addressing?” I teased.   
“I am Irissë!” she mumbled, and once more in her dizziness, attempting to stand fell forwards against me, into my arms.   
It was the beginning of a firm friendship. 

 

The lights were mingling and Irissë, standing on the steps in the most ornate dress I had ever seen her wear, a silver veil draped from a comb at the crown of her head and pearls woven into her braids, was waiting for me when I rode into the front garden of the palace.   
Drawing my mare to a sharp halt, I paused to toss her a peach from my saddle-bags. She caught it easily over her right shoulder, then folded her arms and glared as I dismounted and walked towards the white steps of the palace.  
“You’re late”, she said, but then smiled, brushing a black braid, ornately threaded with silver ribbon and pearls, from her face. I ran forwards and embraced her tightly.  
“Lalwen, my dress!”  
I took a step back, watched as she frantically smoothed out the creases in the skirt with her hands.   
“Since when do you worry about your dresses?” I teased.   
“On the day of my coming-of-age ceremony, that’s when!”  
I took a step back.   
“I hope I am not too late?”  
“No, you still have a few hours, but Amil insisted I dress early just in case.”  
I reached upwards, took a corner of the silver silk draped around her crown of braids and draped down the sides of her face between my thumb and forefinger.   
“Is this your veil then?”  
She nodded.  
“Silver? That’s unusual. Pity. Should have gone for gold like mine...”

 

“Why do you still wear your wedding-veil, Irimë?”  
Irissë’s voice echoed through the darkness and silence behind me down to where I sat huddled shivering under two layers of shawls some distance from the campsite, peering through golden silk at the faint amber glow of the campfires on the sand below and the still— still! – burning fire across the dark still waters, breathing in the scents of pine smoke, burning ship’s tar and the sea.   
She stood motionless for a moment, biting her lips as she looked across the waters, then walked forward sat down alongside me, folded her legs beneath her, reached over and took my hand into hers.   
I gave no answer, kept my eyes fixated on the fires afar, the traitorous and the necessary alike; squeezing my fingers, she cleared her throat and cautiously said:   
“It is so you can pretend that Laurelin never died, isn’t it? Looking at the world with gold in front of your eyes, it is almost as if...”  
I turned and stared at her. With her free hand, she reached down into the bundle she had carried with her and withdrew a length of silver.   
“You see, I watched you and I tried doing the same, for Telperion. The trouble is that daylight eludes me, of course...”  
She paused for a moment.  
“I wonder, could we resurrect the mingling of the lights if we put them together?”  
Pressing the seamed corner the silk tight between my thumb and fingertip, I lifted my veil away from my face and held it to the stars. Irissë then pushed her own veil of silver under and up against mine with her palm, then slipped her head under both so that cheeks pressed, we looked at the stars through gold and silver both.   
In the darkness, she kissed my cheek, and out lashes touched.  
I kissed her half-closed eyes in return, and in each other’s arms, we rested. 

It became a ritual on the ice we entered only days after; a twice daily rite of clasped, unmittened palms and softly pressed cheeks, held in such hours as we designated mornings and evenings, kisses stolen side by side under our entwined veils of silver and gold. Awkward kisses, fumbled with numb fingers; in time, the taste of perfume on her lips became that of frost, her skin like mine dry and cracked, my fingers red and raw as I pushed aside the worn fur of her hood to press my fingers into her hair...  
“What are you doing?”  
“Remembering the trees!” we would say.   
Where are Lalwen and Aredhel? They are remembering the trees.  
We overheard that many times, and each time, we laughed; though our entwined wedding veils only served to darken the world still further, though sheltered beneath the discarded possibilities of the world we were born into we rubbed each other’s hands raw for warmth, leant in and tasted blood upon each other’s frozen lips, somehow, in each other’s arms, remembering the trees, we laughed. 

It was too cold to laugh, labour enough to breathe in the freezing air over the effort of placing one step in front of the other in knee-deep snow. All the same, I did best to maintain some semblance of humour; I leant in against her and teasingly whispered:  
“It is morning, Irissë, where is your veil?”   
She bowed her head, trudged on in silence for some moments, eyes averted to the snow.   
“Irissë?”  
Finally, she said:  
“I gave it away. To Itarillë. She needed something – something to hold on to, so I gave her the memory of Telperion. It was all I had.”  
Her eyes met mine. I reached over and clasped her mittened hand.   
“Laurelin will do just fine for us from now on, meldonya.”  
It did; in Endorë, the new lights remembered for us, and, for a few brief years the worn silken veil that marked the boundaries of our affections became the sky.

It was a feast-day in Tirion. Irissë and I, having slipped free of the throng packed in around the high palace gates for the festivities went searching in vain for an empty square or a garden, pushing our way through the seemingly unending crowds, wiping the beads of sweat from our arms and foreheads with our shawls and berating Turukáno for building his city of white marble that captured the heat of the burning summer sun like an exceptionally ornate oven. At last, somehow, we found a square that was entirely deserted. The glimpse at the clear, deep waters of the fountain at the centre we received once we kicked off our sandals and ran across the prickled grass to the centre of the square revealed why: this fountain alone was not flowing crimson with wine for the midsummer festivities, and we were grateful for it.   
Regardless, the square was still public, and courtly etiquette limited our means of staving off the heat to pressing wrists and palms against the cold stone, surreptitiously shifting skirts to maximise the touch of skin to the bench, until at last Irissë gave up and lay down on her back to reach over and trickle water over her face with her fingertips, looking up at the sky. I joined her, etiquette forgotten, teasingly splashing her face in return, lying close enough to feel the touch of her skin against mine.   
“If it this hot on the height of Tumladen, what must it be like in the lowlands?” I muttered.   
“I will let you know when I return from them.”  
My hand stopped still in the waters where I was trailing it; I rolled over on the stone to look into her eyes.  
“Return?”  
She drew a deep breath.   
“I am leaving Gondolin, to dwell in Hithlum, for a time.”  
My fingers reached over, touched her satin-covered shoulder.   
“Irissë...”  
“I’ll be perfectly fine, Meldonya. Leaving Tumladen is not so dreadful as you all seem to think, we dwelt there comfortably for a century...”  
She paused, reached over and touched my cheek.   
“I promise you, Irimë, I’ll come back safely.”  
We leant back and stared upwards at the patches of sky visible between the innumerable gold and silver pennants fluttering in the wind. 

 

“Lalwen.”  
Idril was standing in the door of sick-room, her eyes averted, the knuckles of her right hand white against the doorhandle, the left reverently clutching a small bundle of fabric to her breast.   
I lowered my hands from my face and our eyes met.   
“What do you want?”  
She looked rapidly downwards at the floor, toying with a fold of her skirt.   
“Lalwen, I—“  
She took a deep breath.   
“I have something of hers, it’s only a little thing, something I no longer need, but I thought it might be of some small comfort to you...”  
She paced across the chamber and pressed a bundle of softly wrapped in tissue paper into my hand laid limply across my lap. I did not recognise it at first; the silver silk was all-but faded having been tugged to fraying point between the fingers of a frightened child, indented with the marks of centuries spent crushed and folded at the bottom of a chest, however treasured... But even now when I held it to my face it coloured the cold stone of the ashen mourning chamber in soft, silver light...  
I laid both veils over her eyes when I kissed her forehead farewell.


End file.
